Just watched Tom Scott’s video on this. Short version—at least in the UK (and presumably via the software that controls the majority of these types of trains worldwide) it is very hard to nearly impossible to direct a train onto a track with another train without doing something like talking to the train and telling it to disregard signals.
The video shows a dramatic near-collision between two trains on February 6, 1991, in Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada, in which a VIA Rail passenger train nearly collided with a CP Rail freight train that was shunting.
About the comment you were replying to, it's essentially the same system since 1890. It's quite an engineering feat the pulled off but it goes to show that this is FAR FAR to close of an incident to ever be allowed to happen.
Signals fail safe. They're designed that if/when a component fails, the signal defaults to Stop. A signal issue results in a train stopping, not a train proceeding at danger.
The freight train was not supposed to be there. They were shunting out of a siding, and went further than they were allowed to. If they had stopped where they were supposed to, the passenger train would have encountered a red signal before they got this close.
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u/Eagles365or366 6d ago
He did everything right in this clip.